Tim Stevens - Jokerman

No guns , thought Purkiss crazily. No more guns today. Enough.

He smashed the side of his fist into Tullivant’s wrist in a hammer blow that made the arm drop away, then followed with a punch to Tullivant’s face. Tullivant reeled, got in a kick to Purkiss’s thigh that sent a howl of pain and made him stumble. Purkiss used his slightly bent position to his advantage by ramming his lowered head into Tullivant’s abdomen, pinning him against the tree once more.

He sensed Tullivant’s hands raised above his head, clasped, ready to come down in a killer blow that would snap Purkiss’s neck, so he rammed again with his head, imagining he was driving Tullivant’s belly flat against the tree behind him, mashing his abdominal contents to pulp, rammed again, and again, and he felt a weight on top of him, but not that of a blow; rather, of Tullivant’s sagging torso as he jackknifed forward.

Purkiss wrenched away and stood up, watched Tullivant’s doubled body sag face-forward onto the ground. His lips were distorted against the grass and soil, his face waxen, his breathing coming in winded gasps.

Purkiss stood looking down at the man as he caught his own breath. He kicked him, hard, in the ribs, and Tullivant flopped over onto his back, his eyes half-closed.

Purkiss glanced at Tullivant’s gun, a few feet away.

It would be easy.

Just the two of them here, for at least a few minutes more. Nobody about. An easy story to concoct.

He picked up the gun.

Tullivant’s eyelids fluttered in understanding.

Purkiss flung the gun amongst the trees.

‘Up,’ he said.

Tullivant rose to his knees, retched, climbed his hands up his legs, reached a stooped position, keeled over on to one knee.

Purkiss grabbed him by the arm to haul him up. Tullivant swayed drunkenly but remained upright. They manoeuvred out into the clearing.

The woman, Goddard, was still sitting on the bench. Her head was turned towards them.

‘It’s all right,’ called Purkiss. ‘It’s over.’

Beside him Tullivant lurched, and for an instant Purkiss thought the man was either going to collapse again or was making one last attempt at putting up a fight; but then he heard the twin booming cracks, heard Emma Goddard’s scream from across the clearing, saw Tullivant jerk and stagger and twist to his knees, dropping once more to the ground, two bloody ragged holes punched through his jacket.

Kasabian stepped into the clearing, the gun in her hand already lowered, her gaze switching from Purkiss to Tullivant’s body and back again.

‘I thought he had the drop on you,’ she said.

The aftershock of the shots rang around the clearing. At the bench, Goddard was cowering, still screaming but with her hands clamped over her mouth so that the sound emerged as a high-pitched keening.

Purkiss said, ‘Nonsense.’

Kasabian’s eyes widened.

‘And you know it,’ he said.

She watched him. She was ten feet away. Purkiss didn’t know how quick her reaction times were, but she was clearly an accurate shot.

‘Tullivant had to die,’ he said. ‘It would have been better if he’d killed me, but now that he’s failed, he couldn’t be allowed to live.’

Sirens, lots of them, were detaching themselves from the low background hum of the surrounding city.

‘That’s why I rang you earlier to tell you Tullivant was here, and I was coming to get him,’ Purkiss said. ‘I wanted to panic you. Make you expose yourself. You knew there was a chance I’d get the better of him, take him alive. And that’s why you’re here. Presumably on your own.’

Stalling was an art. But it helped if you knew how long you had to do it for. Purkiss had no idea.

‘The question you’re asking yourself is, when did I find out about you? The answer’s out in the desert, outside Riyadh. I captured one of the Scipio Rand operatives and interrogated him. He told me that back in 2006, a regular pool of Paras were escorting prisoners from Iraq to Saudi Arabia for further transportation elsewhere. That’s when the penny dropped.’

The sirens were coming closer, but it wasn’t them Purkiss was waiting for.

‘The reason you passed the polygraph test wasn’t that you’re skilled at doing so, but because you never actually lied. I just asked you the wrong questions. Specifically, I asked if you’d sent a gunman to my house to kill me, or to frighten me. And you hadn’t. The gunman, Tullivant, was there to kill Tony Kendrick. Just as he’s been killing every fellow member of that Para outfit who was involved in escorting those prisoners.

‘Because it was you , Kasabian. You were in charge of the torture of prisoners on British soil during the Iraq occupation, specifically in 2006. Not Sir Guy Strang. You liaised with Scipio Rand, ordered the transfer of selected prisoners to the UK, paid and supervised Dennis Arkwright to torture them. But some of them didn’t stay silent afterwards. Mohammed Al-Bayati, for one. And he spoke to Charles Morrow. Somehow, you discovered Morrow was going to blow the whistle on the whole sordid operation. He might not have known all the details, might not even have known of your involvement. But he knew enough to warrant, in your eyes, being killed. So you sent Tullivant to take him out.’

Kasabian had raised the gun now, held it steady on Purkiss’s chest. Her gaze held that fascinated look he’d noticed at their first meeting.

‘I suspect you’d already begun erasing all traces of the 2006 affair, because you were gunning for the top job and were rewriting history in preparation. That’s why most of those Paras were killed in the last couple of weeks, before Morrow was shot. But at some point you hit on a masterstroke: why not implicate Guy Strang in the torture? Concoct evidence that he was behind it all? That way you’d both get rid of him, and emerge a squeaky-clean hero yourself. So you “hired” me. An outsider, renowned for getting results. And you laid a trail of false clues, pointing in Strang’s direction. The supposed notebook in Morrow’s flat, which I imagine I was supposed to find but which Hannah Holley discovered first. That led me to Arkwright. And you’d primed Arkwright to lie, to tell me that Guy Strang had been his boss.’

Come on , thought Purkiss. Kasabian had taken a couple of steps forward, and was holding the gun in a two-handed grip.

‘What did you offer Arkwright?’ he went on. ‘Amnesty? Whatever it was, you had no intention of honouring it. As soon as he’d mentioned Strang’s name, Tullivant had to dispose of him, and his sons. That made me a little suspicious, by the way. I was blinded by teargas that day. Tullivant could have killed me. But he didn’t. I was part of the plan, back then. Part of the team who would reveal Strang as the mastermind of an illegal torture operation. So I had to be kept alive.’

Purkiss held up a finger. ‘One thing that does puzzle me, though. Arkwright mentioned Rossiter as he was dying. Not you. I don’t understand why.’

He thought Kasabian might stay silent, or obfuscate, but she replied directly. ‘Arkwright never knew I was in charge. I recruited him through proxies. We never met. Even when I instructed him to mention Strang’s name, he thought I was acting in good faith, and that Strang genuinely was involved.’

‘So why mention Rossiter?’

She tilted her head. ‘Rossiter recruited Arkwright while he was in the nominal employ of Scipio Rand. Arkwright probably assumed he was somehow involved in this. We’ll never know.’

Purkiss detected movement between the trees, in the park on the other side, some distance away still. He made a point of keeping his eyes on Kasabian’s.